Contents

Early
life

Duchovny was born in New York City, New York, the son of
Margaret "Meg" (née Miller), a school
administrator and teacher, and Amram Ducovny (1927-2003),[2] a
writer and publicist who worked for the American Jewish
Committee.[3][4][5] David
Duchovny's paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia, and his mother is a Lutheran immigrant from Scotland.[6][7] His
father dropped the h in his last name to escape the sort
of mispronunciations he suffered at the hands of sergeants while
serving in the Army.[3]

He then received a Master of Arts, also in
English Literature, from Yale University and subsequently began
work on a Ph.D. that remains unfinished.[4]
The title of his uncompleted doctoral thesis was Magic and
Technology in Contemporary Poetry and Prose.

Career

Duchovny appeared in an advertisement for Löwenbräu beer in
1987. He appears in two scenes in Working Girl (1988). He had a
recurring role as a transvestiteDEA agent on the series
Twin Peaks
and played the narrator/host in the long-running Showtime erotica/softcore TV
series Red
Shoe Diaries. In 1993, Duchovny began starring in the sci-fi series
The X-Files
as FBI Special Agent Fox
Mulder, a conspiracy
theorist who believed his sister was abducted by aliens.[4]
The show emerged as a cult hit and quickly became one of The Fox Network's first major
hits. During the show's run, in between the fifth and sixth
seasons, Duchovny co-starred alongside Gillian Anderson in a 1998 motion
picture that continued the X-Files storyline, titled
The X-Files: Fight the Future.[4]
He remained with the series until quitting in 2001, partly due to a
contract dispute that occurred after season seven finished
filming.[9]
Duchovny appeared in half of the season eight episodes, but did not
appear in season nine until the series finale in 2002. He also
provided the voice for a parody of his Fox Mulder character in an
episode of The
Simpsons, entitled The Springfield Files.

Duchovny caused controversy when it became public that he was
the primary reason that filming of The X-Files series was
moved from Vancouver, British Columbia to Los Angeles in
1998. Many residents of Vancouver were upset with Duchovny over
scripted jokes on Conan O'Brien's late night show about the
city's heavy rainfall; he joked that "Vancouver is a very nice
place, if you like 400 inches of rainfall a day." He also stated,
"Of course, I'm tired of the rain. But if I wasn't married to a
woman that lives in L.A. I'd stay in Vancouver. It's a lovely
city."[10] During
the run of The X-Files, he also made several guest
appearances in the cult TV satire The
Larry Sanders Show, playing himself, but adding a strong
attraction to Sanders. In the final episode of the series, he
performed a parody of Sharon Stone's 'flashing' scene from
Basic
Instinct and a parody of "Dr. Hannibal
Lecter" being introduced to Agent "Clarice Starling" in The Silence of the
Lambs.

He also appeared in a celebrity edition of Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire? in May 2000. He got up to $250,000, but
answered his $500,000 question incorrectly and lost $218,000,
leaving him with $32,000.

Duchovny provided the voice of Ethan Cole in the 2005 video
game, Area
51, as well as that of the title character "XIII" in the
2003 video game XIII. In 2003, Duchovny starred in the
84th[11]
episode of the HBO show Sex And The City. He played the role
of Jeremy, Carrie Bradshaw's high-school
ex-boyfriend, who has committed himself to a Connecticutmental health facility. In 2005, Duchovny,
who had already made his directorial debut with an episode of
The
X-Files, wrote, directed and appeared in the feature film
House of
D.[4]
The film starred Anton Yelchin, Robin Williams and Duchovny's wife Tea
Leoni in a coming-of-age tale.[4]
It received mostly poor reviews[12] and
little box office success.[13]
Duchovny also directed an episode of Bones
(Episode 211, "Judas on a Pole") during its second season.

Personal
life

Duchovny married actress Téa Leoni on May 6, 1997. In April 1999,
Leoni gave birth to a daughter, Madelaine West Duchovny. Their
second child, a son, Kyd Miller Duchovny, was born in June 2002. On
October 15, 2008, Duchovny's and Leoni's representatives issued a
statement that they had separated and had been for several months
prior to this announcement.[15] On
October 21, 2008, Duchovny’s lawyer said that he plans to sue the
U.K.'s ‘’Daily Mail’’
over an article it ran that claimed he had an affair with Hungarian
tennis instructor Edit Pakay while still married to Leoni, a claim
that Duchovny has denied.[16] On
November 15, 2008, the Daily Mail printed a retraction stating that
the story "is inaccurate and Ms. Pakay and Mr. Duchovny are only
friends who used to play tennis occasionally".[17] In
June 2009, Duchovny and Leoni were seen together again and in
interviews in September 2009, it was revealed that they had
reconciled.